G is for Gratinee and Gremolata

The “G” terms are so easy that you get a break today with a really short post. The invitation is still open--if you have a food term you’ve wondered about, put it into the comments below, and I’ll give you a response on the appropriate letter day.

Gratinee is, very simply, food that is covered with a crust. Another word for gratinee is au gratin. When food is baked with breadcrumbs and cheese it is called au gratin style. Gratinee is an early 20^th century term that has fallen into disuse as au gratin replaced it.

Gremolata (or sometimes spelled Gremolada) is a condiment (an edible sauce to impart more flavor to a dish) served with veal dishes or even fish or seafood. The condiment traditionally includes parsley, lemon zest, and garlic, all finely minced and mixed together.

To make your own, check the Internet for dozens of recipes or just mince together 1 bunch of parsley, a clove of garlic, a teaspoon of lemon zest, and salt and pepper to taste. This is a very fresh tasting condiment to pep up a bland dish.

F is for Florentine and Fond and Fricassée

Okay, so I couldn’t decide on just two for today’s post. This is an issue for other letters, too. Sometimes there are just too darn many good ones! So, I whittled “F” terms today to three. Believe me, I could have done more. So let’s get to it! F is for . . .

I must admit, prior to starting this series, I thought florentine merely meant adding spinach to a dish. Turns out it is more complicated than that. Okay, I knew adding florentine to a title meant to prepare it in a way traditionally used in Florence, Italy and its environs.

What I didn’t realize is that florentine means the fish, poultry, or meat would not only be served on a bed of spinach, but it would be covered with Mornay sauce. Or a florentine dish could just have cheese on top that is browned up. (By the way, Mornay is a variation of the Mother Sauce, Béchamel.

Just to muddy the waters more, there is a florentine cookie lacking both spinach and cheese. This cookie is a honey-nut wafer commonly coated with chocolate.

Many of us are fond of fond! Those little browned bits in the bottom of your pan are fond. In fact the word fond in French means “bottom”.  I’ll bet you do what I do with fond. I deglaze my pan with beer or wine (you could use water, too) to get up the bits that I add to the sauce I am serving with the meat. Some people only deglaze in order to make clean-up easier. No, no, no! Use that fond.

One could collect fond and freeze the bits to use later in soups to add depth of flavor. (Maybe have a fond bag in the freezer) Fond is a concentrated version of whatever you were cooking.

Now here’s another one of those words where the French use it in more than one way. Fond is also French for “stock”. You can have a white stock (fond blanc), brown stock (fond brun), or a veggie stock (fond de vegetal).

Lucky for us, fricassée has just one meaning: stew, and traditionally a chicken stew (although veal can be used, too). And the traditional fricassée is a white stew.

Fricassées, white stews, do not use braised meats. Cut-up meat is cooked in oil or fat over low heat and is not browned, just cooked partially through (thereby remaining “white”).

The meat is added to the stew liquid to finish cooking. A fricassée is often prepared with a white sauce, thus the name “white stew” stems from two sources.

E is for Effilé and Émincé

Both our terms, from the French, have to do with slicing thinly. Well, one of them has more than one meaning depending upon the food being cut. Isn’t that interesting?

Émince is a misunderstood word by most of us home cooks. Sounds like “mince”, doesn’t it? But émincé means to slice very thinly (think paper thin) rather than pulverize. In French, their word for our “mince” is entirely different. This is an example of words that appear to be cognates that are not.

Émincé is more like julienned, but the food is cut shorter than julienned food. Typically, you émincé meats, but the word can also apply to fruits and veggies.

Effilé, on the other hand, can also mean “thinly slice” when referring to, say, almonds or pistachios. I use almonds like that in some of my dishes calling for almond slices (not slivers--slivers are like wedges). Lots of baked goods call for sliced almonds to add crunch. I buy sliced almonds, rather than effilé them--too hard, too dangerous for a clumsy cook like me. Wish I had better knife skills, but there you go!

However, effilé, in a different food context, changes meaning drastically. When referring to haricots (beans), to effilé them is to remove that fibrous string running its length and to snap off the top--sounds like “stringing beans”, doesn’t it. Yep.

Impress folks at your next dinner party by referring to how you effilé-d and émincé-d your way through the food prep! (Before you comment and complain about my French, I know the past tense isn’t as indicated here. Okay?)

D is for Demi-Glace and Dredge

Did you ever notice how many cooking terms come to us by way of the French? That is no accident as you know if you’ve read any history of cooking. The French invented the professional cook and many, many cooking sauces and techniques we all use as a matter of course today.

Reminder: If you have any terms you’d like explained, list them in Comments and I’ll get to them on the appropriate day. Now, on to Day 4--D is for …

D is for Demi-Glace

Even if you didn’t know what it was called, I‘m sure you’ve had this rich brown sauce by itself on meat or as a base used to make other sauces. The French word glace (in this context) is the word for icing or glaze. The demi means it is made from veal stock (the traditional way) and volume is reduced 20-40% through cooking. Cooled in the refrigerator, the demi-glace sets up as a jell.

If another stock is used, the term is modified to indicate that. Thus, you might see “beef demi-glace” or “chicken demi-glace” on a menu.

How do you turn meat stock into a glace? You reduce the ingredients by half by heating on the stove for a long time. What do you heat? There are different recipes, but all include using veal (or other) stock, veggies, and seasoning.

If you want to buy demi-glace, high end kitchen stores are a good source. Or make your own with this recipe: http://bit.ly/1i4zb3F

D is for Dredge

What is the meaning of dredge? In cooking, the word dredge means to coat an item of food in flour (or cornmeal or breadcrumbs) before frying. (In my mystery novels, rivers get dredged, but let’s not do that today!)

The standard procedure for breading an item (veggie or meat) prior to frying or deep frying is to dredge the food in flour (or some other grain form). You may have made chicken or veal piccata or fried chicken tenders after dredging.

It can be messy, dredging. If you are only using flour to dredge, pat the meat or veggies dry first, then turn it over and over to coat the food.

Others use a wet and dry dredging technique. Most of those cooks recommend having bowls lined up with your liquid and dry ingredients that you use with two different hands. I’m not so good at that being so determinedly right handed, but maybe you can master the technique of one hand dipping food into egg or buttermilk and the other into the seasoned flour or cornmeal mixture.

Doesn’t matter. It’s going to be messy.

C is for Chiffonade and Cut-In

A good many of us foodies missed the little box or button or whatever it was that allowed us to categorize our posts this month as culinary. Bummer! Makes it harder for me to find new blogs to follow and harder for them to find me. Next year!

Now that we’re a few days into these posts, are there cooking terms/foods/techniques you wonder about? Do you have your own A-Z list of confusing words? List them in the Comments section below, and I will give you an answer on the appropriate letter day. Now, for today, C is for …

C is for Chiffonade

Chiffonade (French for “little ribbons”) is a technique for chopping green, leafy herbs and veggies into long, thin strips. I take a stack of basil or spinach leaves, roll them tightly together, and slice them into thin strips with a sharp knife crosswise.

There is a kitchen gadget (which of course I had to buy) you can roll over herbs to chiffonade them, but I have found that harder to use. The gadget takes longer than the rolling/slicing, and you sometimes end up with mashed herbs or veggies instead of separate strips. Or maybe it is my ineptitude. Whatever, I now chiffonade with my knife.

Interestingly, the chiffonade technique has also been applied to crepes or even thin omelets. But, it is not appropriate to chiffonade herbs with small, irregular leaves (like parsley).

C is for Cut In

You’re getting ready to make piecrust and the recipe says to “cut in” the shortening. Cut in is the technique for keeping that piecrust flaky instead of tough.

There are right and wrong ways to cut in shortening however. First, the shortening must be chilled but not cold. You should be able to mold it like playdough.

Second, cut the shortening into large chunks and add all at once to the dry ingredients. You can either cut in with a pastry blender (with all its sharp edges) or just use your hands to get the flour mixture loose and crumbly looking. The pieces of shortening will vary in size, and that’s the way you want it.

Do not overwork the dough (the biggest mistake people make when cutting in).

B is for Bard and Braise

Welcome back! (See my B word! I’m really into this blog challenge!) I hope you left off reading my first post wondering what is coming up. I had a lot of fun gathering some usual and unusual terms for you. Today . . .

B is for Bard

Bard is a verb. Barding is attaching thin slices of fat or bacon to a roast or poultry before cooking. It probably comes from the Persian word pardah meaning a covering for a horse.

Now why would one bard one’s meat? Sometimes poultry and roasts dry out while cooking. (Haven’t we all had tough and dry meat at some time?) Barding provides not only a cover, but a cover that adds to the moisture while also keeping moisture in. There’s something about fat . . .

Alli, from my Mission Impastable book, should bard something in the sequel. Maybe she could teach the word to her cooking school students. Hmmm.

B is for Braise

Braise is also a verb. A friend who has been cooking for a very long time recently commented that she had seen the word braise on menus (and liked the foods that came that way) but wasn’t quite sure what braising meant. Ta Da! Here I am with the answer for others of you in the same spot.

To braise is to cook in liquid AFTER searing or browning the meat. That simple. It’s a cooking method using dry and then moist heat. Just cooking in liquid doesn’t produce the depth or layers of flavor that browning-first imparts. Just browning doesn’t get the depth of flavors either. Sometimes you’ll see people call braising, pot roasting.  

A is for Al Dente and All-Purpose Flour

What fun we are going to have this month with food terminology--techniques, foods, gadgets, and other stuff! I am a foodie, and though not a trained cook, I am trainable! I write a food column for a local paper and my first culinary mystery, Mission Impastable, came out in January.

 

I find that some of my friends are unfamiliar with what I consider to be common cooking terms. So what better way to spend this April than clarifying food language.

I will spend each post on one or two only. You need to know, there are hundreds of terms to pick from. Though there are not many choices for letters like X, other letters had way too many so I just picked the two that interested me!

Let the fun begin!

A is for Al Dente

You see this phrase on pasta cooking directions. Al dente means it is a little bit chewy, not all mushy and overcooked--firm “to the tooth.” There is science behind cooking your pasta to al dente instead of mush--there are more nutrients in properly cooked pasta! 

So what is al dente like and how do you know you have it? First of all, READ the directions. If the package gives a range of 7-9 minutes, start checking the pasta at 7 minutes. Never cook it longer than the end of the range. And, always add pasta to rapidly boiling, salted water, then set your timer. I always fish out a strand to eat at the beginning of when it may be done to gauge texture.

Practice. You’ll get the hang of it. Oh, and don’t throw it at the wall.

A is for All-Purpose Flour

All-purpose flour is truth in advertising. It’s the flour most of us grew up with and used for cookies, cakes, pies, and coating that delicious fried chicken. It is a blend of hard and soft milled wheat with a medium protein content of 9-12%

Bread flour by way of contrast, is around 11-13% protein, resulting in a heavier, firmer baked product.

Some people use pastry flour or cake flour (instead of all-purpose) to make pie crusts or cakes. Those flours are lower in protein, resulting in smoother, flakier, lighter dough. But for most of us, that is a finer distinction than the every day cook needs. It’s called all-purpose flour for a reason.

If you are want to know more, try these resources:

www.allwords.com/cooking-glossary

http://lifehacker.com/a-beginners-guide-to-the-most-confusing-cooking-terms-1459836282

How to pronounce food words http://www.thrillist.com/eat/nation/commonly-mispronounced-food-words-sriracha-pho-tzatziki-and-more-thrillist-nation